by Hamza as a heretic, and thus, by a curious anomaly, he is actually held in detestation by the very sect which perhaps bears his name. The propagation of the faith in accordance with Hamza’s initiation was undertaken by Ismael ibn Mahommed Tamimi, Mahommed ibn Wahab, Abul-Khair Selama ibn Abd al-Wahal ibn Samurri, and Moktana Baha ud-Din, the last of whom became known by his writings from Constantinople to the borders of India. In two letters addressed to the emperors Constantine VIII. and Michael the Paphlagonian he endeavoured to prove that the Christian Messiah reappeared in the person of Hamza.
It is possible, even probable, that the segregation of the Druses as a people dates only from the adoption of Hamza’s creed. But when it is recalled that other inhabitants of the same mountain system, e.g. the Maronites, the Ansarieh, the Metawali and the “Ismaʽilites,” also profess creeds which, like the Druse system, differ from Sunni Islam in the important feature of admitting incarnations of the Deity, it is impossible not to suspect that Hamza’s emissaries only gave definition and form to beliefs long established in this part of the world. Many of the fundamental ideas of Druse theology belong to a common West Asiatic stock; but the peculiar history of the Mountain is no doubt responsible for beliefs, held elsewhere by different peoples, being combined there in a single creed. Some allowance, too, must be made for the probability that Hamza’s system owed something to doctrines Christian and other, with which the metropolitan position of Cairo brought Fatimite society into contact.
History—There is good reason to regard the Druses as, racially, a mixture of refugee stocks, in which the Arab largely predominates, grafted on to an original mountain population of Aramaic blood and Incarnationist tendencies. The latter is represented more purely by the Maronites (q.v.). The native tradition regards an immigration of Hira Arabs into S. Lebanon, under Khalid ibn Walid in the 9th century, as the beginning of Druse distinctiveness and power; but it also accepts Turkoman and Kurdish elements in the original Druse state. About the same time, or a little later (in the reign of Saladin), it believes that Hermon was colonized by a population of 15,000 Hira and Yemenite Arabs, who had sojourned awhile in Hauran. The name Druse is met with first in Benjamin of Tudela (c. A.D. 1170), and its origin has been much disputed. Some authorities see in it a descriptive epithet, derived from Arabic darasa (those who read the Book), or darisa (those in possession of Truth) or durs (the clever or initiated); but more connect it with the name of the first missionary, Ismael Darazi.
As soon as we begin to know anything of the Druses they were living in a feudal state of society, as village communities under sheikhs, themselves generally subordinate to one or more amirs. In the time of the first crusades the main power was in the hands of the Arslan family, which, however, suffered so severely in wars with the Franks, that it was superseded by the Tnuhs, who, holding Beirut and nearly all the Phoenician coast, came into conflict with the sultans of Egypt. One of these latter, Malik Ashraf, about A.D. 1300, forced outward compliance with Sunni Islam on the Mountain, after defeating the Druses at Ain Sofar. Meanwhile, however, the Maan family, lately immigrant from N. Arabia, was growing in power, and throwing in its lot with the Osmanli invaders in the reign of Selim I., it was promoted to the supreme amirate about 1517. Fakr ud-Din Maan II. increased Druse dominion until it included all the N. Syrian region from the edge of the Antioch plain to Acre, with part of the eastern desert, dominated by his castle at Tadmor (Palmyra), and the important towns of Latakia, Tripoli, Beirut and Saida; and forming further ambitious designs, he intrigued with Christians and broke with the Turks. In 1614 the pasha of Damascus moved against him with a large force, and compelled him to fly from Syria. He sought the courts of Tuscany and Naples and tried to enlist Frank sympathies, inventing (probably) the curious myth, so often credited since, that the Druses are of crusading origin and owe their name to the counts of Dreux.[1] He landed again at Saida in 1619 and recovered his old position. But in 1633 Kuchuk Ahmed Pasha was sent against him with a large army, and succeeded in capturing him with his sons. The family was sent to Constantinople, and two years later strangled. The dynasty struggled on till the end of the century, amid civil war, in which the parties seem to have been divided by the earlier Arab factions of Kaisites (Qaisites) and Yemenites, the Maan belonging to the latter.
The Shehab family, originally Hira Arabs, which had governed Hauran under the early caliphs of Damascus, and thereafter held power in Hermon, intermarried with the Maan; and in the latter’s day of weakness sided with the Kaisi faction and obtained the supreme amirate of the Mountain. But it appears never to have professed the Druse creed, remaining Sunnite. Haidar Shehab, third of the line, inflicted a notable defeat on the pasha of Saida (capital of an Ottoman eyalet since 1688) and the Yemenite Druses at Ain Dara, near Zahleh, in 1711, and proceeded to consolidate Shehab power, breaking up the old feudal society and substituting for the sheikhs mukatajis (tax-contractors), who had penal jurisdiction. The Yemenite Druses thereupon emigrated in large numbers to the Hauran, and laid the foundation of Druse power there. The Turks recognized the status quo, and made terms with the Shehab amir in 1748; but his power was none too well secured against the opposition of the Kurdish Jumblat family, even though he was supported by the Talhuk, Abd al-Malik and Yezbeki families; and it appears that some members of the Shehab joined the Maronite faith in the middle of the 18th century, causing a suspicion of secret apostasy to fall on all the family.
It is said that the amir Beshir, who succeeded about 1786, was himself a crypto-Christian. This remarkable man, who ruled the Mountain for fifty-four years, maintained his power by taking the side of one rebel pasha after another, betraying each in turn, and cultivating relations with European admirals. His earliest ally was Ahmed “Jezzar,” who established himself in Acre in contumacious independence late in the 18th century. Beshir supported Jezzar against Napoleon in 1799 and earned the friendship of Sir Sidney Smith. Falling out with Jezzar, Beshir fled to Cairo in 1805, attached himself to Mehemet Ali, and returned to take up the reins. Once more chased out by the Turks, he was again in the Mountain in 1823, allied with Abdallah, on whom Jezzar’s mantle had ultimately fallen at Acre, and maintaining friendly relations with the “English Princess,” Lady Hester Stanhope. He now finally worsted the Jumblat. The invasion of Syria by Mehemet Ali in 1831 caused Beshir to desert Abdallah and throw in his lot with Ibrahim Pasha; but he was not cordially followed by the Druses in general, and had good excuse for revolt in 1839, and intrigue with the British admiral in 1840. Ibrahim, however, by his possession of Druse hostages, restrained the amir, and after the bombardment of Acre, the Turks called him to account for his record of rebellion and treachery. He fled to Malta on a British ship, but was induced to go to Constantinople, where he died in 1851.
His successor, Beshir al-Kassim, openly joined the Maronites, and instigating these against the malcontents of his own people, brought enmities, which had been growing for a century, to a head, and initiated a devastating internecine warfare which was to continue for twenty years. The state of the Lebanon went from bad to worse, and at last, in January 1842, the Turkish government appointed Omar Pasha as administrator of the Druses and Maronites, with a council of four chiefs from each party; but the pasha, attempting to effect a disarming, was besieged in November in the castle of Beit ed-Din by the Druses under Shibli el-Arrian. At the instigation of the European powers he was recalled in December, and the Druses and Maronites were placed under separate kaimakams (governors), who, it was stipulated, were not to be of the family of Shehab. Disturbances again broke out in 1845, the native mukatajis refusing to obey the kaimakams. The Maronites flew to arms, but with the assistance of the Turks their opponents carried the day. A superficial pacification effected by Shekib Effendi, the Ottoman commissioner, lasted only till his departure; and the Porte
- ↑ Sophisticated Druses still sometimes claim connexion with Rosicrucians, and a special relation to Scottish freemasons.
